Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson

In the mid-1960s, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected leftover, cooled down radiation from early in the Universe's history by carefully scanning the sky with a device called the Holmdel Horn Antenna. Their discovery was of huge importance to cosmology and won them the Nobel prize.

The astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation by chance in the mid-1960s while using the Holmdel Horn Antenna in New Jersey to map the sky. The CMB was later mapped with satellites, including the WMAP probe.

Arno Penzias describes observations (made with Robert Wilson) using the Holmdel Horn Antenna. These observations would later be identified as the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

About Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson

The accidental discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 is a major development in modern physical cosmology. Although predicted by earlier theories, it was first found accidentally by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson as they experimented with the Holmdel Horn Antenna. The discovery was important evidence for a hot early Universe (big bang theory) and was evidence against the rival steady state theory. In 1978, Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint discovery.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia.
If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia.